Dealer South. Love All

                                    ♠          K 9

                                    ♥          A 7 6 5 3

                                    ♦          Q 6 4

                                    ♣         9 4 2

            ♠          Q 7 4                                       ♠          8

            ♥          K J 10 2                                  ♥          Q 8 4

            ♦          7                                              ♦          K 9 8 5 2

            ♣         A 8 7 6 5                                ♣         K Q J 3

                                    ♠          A J 10 6 5 3 2

                                    ♥          9

                                    ♦          A J 10 3

                                    ♣         10

Our hand this week comes from the Red Sea Festival 2016, On our hand  we are going to do a con to the “always coverers” and use Zia’s tip “If they don’t cover…..”

West leads a Diamond and this looks like a short suit lead, which may mean he might have “long trumps” hopefully no more than 3 or better still 2.

With you having a singleton the odds are heavily in favour that one of the opponents has a singleton too and the trump might be a singleton in one of the hands and possibly the Diamond lead too.

How do we play the trump suit. Well with 9. we generally play for the drop. However the odds favour 3:1 break but who has the singleton trump? probably East so we are going to finesse West. However it cannot hurt to play the Spade Jack just in case West is an “always coverer” So without much ado at trick one we play the Spade Jack from the “closed hand”. West duly obliges and covers the Jack and now we have no problem in wrapping up 11 tricks via 7 trumps 3 Diamonds and 1 Heart. We should also play off all our trumps straight away in the hope that East throws one and our last diamond could be established, The Spades were 3:1 and maybe West should not have covered.

However East kept all his Diamonds and we only made three.

What about our esteemed West? Should he have covered or not?  Well the rules of covering an honour state that you cover and honour with an honour  if you can promotes something for yourself or something for partner. If the A109XXX  were in dummy then all the possible cards that could be promoted are on show in dummy and you would not cover. Here however the cards are not on show in dummy so should West cover here? Well the bidding should have told him that all the remaining goodies in the spade suit ie  AJ109  are in the closed hand or  out would never have been able to rebid 3S. Therefore West MUST NOT COVER as all he would be doing is helping out South’s cause and when he follows suit he should try to do so without a hesitation J

You can also watch the following movie to see how the hand pans out. To view this programme you will need  to download htttp://www.haroldschogger.com/bridgevu.setup

  alternatively watch the film www.haroldschogger.com/movies2.htm

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